用英语解释意识流小说的概念

“意识流”是西方现代文学艺术中，特别是小说和电影中广为应用的写作技巧。最早出现于一次世界大战之后的时期。意识流小说是现代派小说的一个重要类型。代表作家如法国的马塞尔·普鲁斯特、英国的弗吉利亚·伍尔芙和美国的威廉·福克纳等人，于第一次世界大战前后运用新的概念与方法创作小说。他们的作品着力展示人物的内心世界采用迥异于传统文学的心理描写方法，开创了现代小说的新纪元。

Stream of consciousness is a narrative device that attempts to give the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue , or in connection to his or her actions. Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in thought and lack of some or all punctuation. Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue and soliloquy, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, which are chiefly used in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness the speaker's thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself); it is primarily a fictional device.

Possibly the most famous use of the technique came in 1922 with the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses. Prominent uses in the years that followed include Italo Svevo in La coscienza di Zeno (1923),Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1929).